Softball's Lisa Boone and track and field standout Huguens Jean were named UMBC's Outstanding Athletes at the annual Varsity Awards Ceremony.

Basketball's Jessie Brown, and soccer's Brian Rowland and lacrosse's Tim Flanagan shared the Outstanding Senior Athlete award. Track and field standout Sherita Baker and swimmer Karl Strauss were presented the Matt Skalsky Outstanding Scholar Athlete award.

Boone earned All Northeast Conference honors in softball in all four seasons and has become UMBC's all-time leader in doubles, triples, extra-base hits, games played and at-bats. The political science major is also second in career hits and runs scored and fourth in RBI's and stolen bases. Boone posted a UMBC and NEC record 29-game hitting streak in 2002 and finished the year 37th in the nation with a .396 batting mark.

Jean is not quite finished his amazing 2003 campaign. He earned a trip to the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships by winning the high jump at the IC4A meet with a leap of 7'1.25", a UMBC and NEC record. He was named Outstanding Field Athlete at both the NEC indoor and outdoor championships, and won the high jump at the Penn Relays. The computer engineering major is also a Verizon District II Academic All American.

Brown became the all-time assists leader in UMBC women's basketball history, with 509 career handouts. She also tallied 1,124 points, seventh-most in school history, and she also established a school record for minutes played. The point guard and psychology major is currently second with 125 three-point goals.

Rowland and Flanagan, both goalkeepers, each had tremendous impacts on their teams' success. Rowland set single season (11) and career (25) records for shutouts and earned All America honors from College Soccer News. The economics major was the ninth player selected in the Major Indoor Soccer League draft, as he was tabbed by the Harrisburg Heat.

Flanagan was a National Player of the Week as a junior and earned ECAC Defensive Player of the Week honors this year. His save percentage hovered around the 60 percent plateau this year and he amassed 318 saves, seventh on UMBC's all-time list, in just two seasons. The information systems major's inspired play led UMBC to wins over four teams who competed in the NCAA Lacrosse Championship Tournament.

Baker, a native of Hampton, Virginia, was the NEC Scholar Athlete for the sport of Indoor Track and Field this winter after she captured the 800 meters at the league's indoor championships. The English major, who maintains a 3.83 grade point average, also struck NEC gold in the 4 x 800 meters both indoors and outdoors.

Strauss, bound for the University of Toledo Law School in the fall, captured the 200 breaststroke in five dual meets this season and was part of a 400 medley relay team which struck gold at the NEC Championship meet. Strauss, who maintains a 3.85 GPA, was recently awarded the political science department's Outstanding Scholar Leader Award.

The latest exhibit at the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery, "100 Years of Camera Work" shows the vision of photographer Alfred Stieglitz -- who published the quarterly journal Camera Work for nearly two decades in the early 20th century - and significant photography by Gertrude Käsebier, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, George Seeley, Eva Watson-Schütze, and Alvin Langdon Coburn. Other modernist artists whose work appears in the journal include Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, and Francis Picabia.

"100 Years of Camera Work celebrates the impact that the journal had by exhibiting UMBC's entire holding in a very rare public display of an exceedingly rare publication. In recognition of the powerful influence that Camera Work had upon the development of Modernism in photography, 20th century art photographs made following 1917 have been selected from UMBC's Photography Collections to complement the exhibition of Camera Work. Among the works to be included in the exhibition are many by modernists such as UMBC visual arts professor Jaromir Stephany, as well as Ralph Gibson, David Plowden, Minor White, Judy Dater, Olivia Parker, Barbara Crane, Barbara Young, and Lotte Jacobi.

Camera Work captured images of life, of people, and put them in a medium that people all over the world could look at and enjoy. Breaking from the past and bringing a new avant-garde artistic style to the still somewhat traditional and formalist genre of photography was one of the purposes of this classic magazine.

"What Stieglitz wanted to do was show that photography wasn't just commerce, it was art," says Tom Beck, UMBC's chief curator. "These photographers made art for art's sake." Pulling images from UMBC's Special Collections, Beck created a conglomeration of photographs from the early 20th century that tried to evoke similar sentiments.

The idea of "art for art's sake" is captured in one of the first photographs from the early years of Camera Work on display, Gertrude Kasebier's Ms. N. In the most technical of definitions, this is a portrait; the woman is sitting for her picture to be taken. But that is where any resemblance between a typical portrait and this photograph stops. The woman is leaning towards you, her dark hair is falling about her shoulders, her eyes are begging you to look at her. There is an innocence and an unconscious sensuality coexisting within this woman, battling to see who the victor will be. She looks at you and you must stare back at her. She has a secret in her eye that she is trying to share with you.

This is the photography that exemplifies the beginning years, daring to try something different, make a creative statement when before only a replication of someone else's reality would be imprinted on the paper. As time passed, Camera Work expanded from photography into illustrations of sculpture, drawings, and paintings. It was during the New Art years of the magazine from 1910-1914 that European artists Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were brought to mainstream America. Camera Work also included articles about modernism and its impact on art. Among the famous writers published in the journal were include Charles H. Caffin, George Bernard Shaw, Sadakichi Hartman, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, and Mabel Dodge Luhan.

As chaos in the form of World War I inched its way closer to the America, the frequency of the magazine's publication lessened and subscriptions also decreased. Another reason for this was the direction the magazine was taking - the photography was no longer the avant-garde form that had captured people's eye. Some of the last pictures in the exhibit are of Wall Street in the late 1910s, of people walking on the street, their sharp-angled shadows solitary and long. There is a tangible loneliness and detachment from others that is connected with these images.

--Jennifer Leigh Gibson

Library Gallery hours: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, 12 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 12 to 8 p.m.; and Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m. The gallery is closed Sundays and major holidays. For more information call (410) 455-2270.

Photos, from top:
Alfred Stieglitz, In the New York Central Yards, 1903, copyprint

Alvin Langdon Coburn, The Bridge-Sunlight, 1906, photogravure

Alvin Langdon Coburn, On the Embankment, 1909, photogravure

All photos courtesy of the UMBC Photography Collections.

Pat Muston's transformation is nearly complete.

Throughout his prep athletic career and into his first two years at UMBC, the spotlight was directly focused on the junior midfielder from Novi, Michigan. On the football field, the rugged tailback was usually the one scoring the game-winning touchdown. In lacrosse, he earned a coveted spot in Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd" after a seven-goal performance. In his freshman and sophomore seasons at UMBC, he had his best efforts when the cameras were rolling, as he scored six of his twelve goals when WMAR-TV televised the Retrievers, including a Player of the Game citation vs. Penn State.

But for most teams to be successful, players must accept and excel at their role. This season, Muston was handed the full-time task of handling UMBC's face-offs duties. His name doesn't appear in print and on air as much, but he couldn't be happier with his contribution to the team.

"The face-off to me is the one position where you can really hurt the other team," said Muston. "If we score and get the face off and go right back on offense, the other team can't get the ball back. Lacrosse is a game of possessions--if we can win 70-80 percent of my face offs, in a normal game, that can be ten or so more possession than the other team will have which gives us a great advantage."

Muston did have a chance to bask in the limelight on March 29, as he tied a school record by winning 22 (of 27) draws vs. ninth-ranked Rutgers. He dominated four different Scarlet Knights that were sent out to challenge him. That performance vaulted him into the top ten in the nation in face-off percentage (57.0%) and ground balls per game (5.67). But UMBC let a fourth quarter lead slip away and fell in overtime, 12-11. To Muston, the record is meaningless.

"It all comes down to the team. If I don't win one face off and we win the game, that's all that counts. I had my best college game vs. Rutgers face-off wise, but it doesn't mean anything because we didn't win. I just kept thinking after the game, what else could I have done to help us win," said Muston.

Moreover, the 6'2", 220 pound psychology major doesn't feel he should be given credit when the Retrievers capture the face-off. Junior Matt Gallagher and senior long stick midfielder Greg Wojtech have formed a tough threesome over the past several weeks. "Face-off percentage should not say Pat Muston, it should say Pat Muston-Matt Gallagher-Greg Wojtech. I would not want anyone else on the wing but Matt Gallagher--I know he is always in position and will get the ball. Greg Wojtech is an amazing athlete. They are more important to the face than I am. I am only doing a third of the work, my job is easy--they have to really fight for the ball."

Only twelve years ago, natives of Novi, Michigan (about an hour from the Michigan State campus in East Lansing) thought lacrosse was just a city in neighboring Wisconsin. But a local coach, the late Don Sill, introduced the game to Pat's older brother, Brad, and his friends and the sport took hold. Brad came east and ended up as the captain of the V.M.I. lacrosse squad. Pat had the advantage of starting the sport when he was

in fourth grade, and saw his brother and Novi standouts Mike Hicks (UMBC) and Josh Tankersley (Towson) make the journey to lacrosse country. Brad encouraged his younger brother to experience life outside of the large shadow of Michigan State, and Pat immediately fell in love with the UMBC campus on his visit.

Asked if he had any regrets about his choice of sport or where he chose to play, Muston replied, "Not a single one."

Like many aspects of sport, mental toughness is critical to the success of a face-off specialist. Just a few weeks ago, Muston found himself on the short end of many of the battles in the circle, and he knows he is only as good as his last effort. "You have to have a lot of confidence--it can really deteriorate during a game. If you lose two or three in a row, it gets to you mentally. You think, how am I going to beat this guy? You must block it out, think about the next face-off. The more draws you win, the better the chance you can keep going.

"In the game, when I started losing draws, it would eat me up inside and I would think too much," explains Muston. "You really can't think too much; you think and plan strategy during the week in practice. When the ref says down and set, your mind goes blank, and it's all just natural and you have to make split decisions in the next second or two."

Like most student-athletes, there is a lot more to Muston than what fans see on Saturdays. He is actively involved in the athletic department's mentoring program, as he and several of his teammates visit Catonsville Middle School a couple of times a week to befriend young teens who are in need of some help. After graduation, he plans to return to Michigan and enter the home building business with brother Brad and is considering coaching lacrosse at the youth or high school level. He would like to provide those kids with the same opportunities that were afforded him a decade ago.

"I look back and see what my coaches did for me and I would like to help out with kids, and have them say, 'Pat really helped me out.' It doesn't even have to be in lacrosse, just for them to have someone to talk to."

It seems like Pat Muston is winning more of those one-on-one battles every day.